This invention relates to social networks and in particular to determining and providing feedback about the integrity of communications sent by an application on a social networking platform.
Social networking systems allow users to connect and interact with each other using various communication channels of the systems. For example, a user may post contact information, background information, job information, hobbies, and/or other user-specific data to a location associated with the user on a social networking system. Other users can then review the posted data by browsing user profiles or searching for profiles including specific data. Social networking systems also allow users to associate themselves with other users, thus creating a web of connections among the users of the systems.
Social networking systems may further act as platforms for social applications, which provide various additional functionalities that leverage the social connections maintained by the social networking systems. These social applications can be configured to distribute various communications (e.g., stories, advertisements, etc.) to their users using the communication channels of the social networking systems. For example, a social application may allow users to play a game, share photos, or otherwise interact with their connections in a social networking system, where the social application obtains a user's connections from the social networking system rather than maintaining its own user profile for each user.
Since these social applications are often provided and operated by third party entities external to the social networking systems, some of the social applications may cause communications to be distributed over the social networking systems that are unwanted (e.g., spam), offensive, or otherwise poorly perceived by users. Current social networking systems may automatically detect that social applications are sending poor quality communications and take appropriate action, such as blocking the applications from sending further communications. Such remedies may be highly disruptive to the applications and their users, and in many cases the applications have little advance warning that their communications are about to cause remedial action by the social networking systems. Therefore, even well-intentioned application providers are unable to get useful information about their communications before it is too late.